11 comments:

I just read about this in the Times. ESPN They must be paying him a great deal of money. I get it that he loves baseball and all that but ESPN? It's one of those channels that one is forced to get if one wants any other premium channel, thereby forcing me to subsidized an already bloated sports industry. It may be that he will continue his political analysis on the Keith Olbermann show, which I read about for the first time in the Times article. But ESPN? Yikes!

ESPN is one of the few things I miss about cable TV. Also, ESPN is tied in with ABC (and ABC news) and the Walt Disney Corporation. So no disrespect to the Times but he's moving to a much bigger and wider platform, where he can cover a variety of topics, not just sports.

It's one of those channels that one is forced to get if one wants any other premium channel, thereby forcing me to subsidized an already bloated sports industry

Well, as a big sports fan --great British Open and Tour de France finales this past weekend-- why should *I* have to pay for dozens of dreary cooking shows, some of them hosted by racist assholes? Or "history" channels that don't have any history bar the Nazis but hours of crap like Ice Road Truckers? Have I mentioned all the "reality" shows about rich housewives and drug addicts in recovery and washed-up 80's rock stars that I pay for?

Meanwhile, I can't watch the Ashes cricket matches between Australia and England because *gasp* the "already bloated sports industry" doesn't carry it here on TV, only in bars.

You shouldn't have to pay for those shows. There are 70+ sport channels on my cable service, not to mention the seemingly endless optional sport channels I neither watch history nor cooking, nor reality shows on premium cable. could subscribe to. I would prefer to subscribe to the channels I like and bypass the others.

"But according to the media research and analysts firm SNL Kagan, basic cable customers paid an average of $5.06 a month for ESPN in 2012, making ESPN, which has nearly 100 million subscribers, by far the most expensive product on basic cable. Other companies are looking to cash in as well — Fox recently announced it's launching a national sports channel to rival ESPN.

In the grand scheme of things, the deal seems reasonable to sports fans. For about the price of a large Frappuccino at Starbucks, you get a month's worth of America's best live sports lineup.

The rub is, non-sports watchers or those who don't want some sports channels also are paying and have no choice in the matter."Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2013/05/31/2660968/watch-it-or-not-you-pay-for-sports.html#storylink=cpy